


A Turtle In a Sea of Paper Flowers (Adrift We Found Each Other)

by ArtsyDeath



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bathing/Washing, Codependency, Complicated Relationships, F/F, Feral Behavior, Jinchuuriki Nohara Rin, Mild Gore, Morally Ambiguous Character, Naked Cuddling, Namikaze Minato Lives, Nohara Rin Lives, Nudity, Possessive Behavior, Rin has no real concept of modesty, Scenting, Spending several years with only a demon turtle as company has its problems, Tactile, Touch-Starved, Uchiha Obito Lives, Uzumaki Kushina Lives, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-11-02 05:51:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20643335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtsyDeath/pseuds/ArtsyDeath
Summary: The Sanbi grumbles inside her mind, a strange rustling noise sliding against her senses and her nails digs deep into the skin of her arms, feeling the way the great demon settled down with a heavy exhale filled with deep satisfaction.The three tails shifts behind her, one curling over her shoulder with a gentle brush against her cheek and Rin bites down on the inside of it until she tastes blood as she curls up naked, alone and afraid – far from the comfort of Konoha.Mine, it thinks to her contently.-Or: it's a foolish thing to bind a being of pure chakra to a thirteen-year-old with little understanding of seals and fate takes a very different turn for one Nohara Rin.





	1. Hunter

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the wonderful [vita-divata](https://vita-divata.tumblr.com/) whose art inspired this. Check out the tag "My Weird AU" on their tumblr and enjoy some absolutely beautiful art!

Rin claws against the ground with a scream, her back arching, brown bleeding into golden, sclera a sickening shade of purple, the ground crumbling beneath the tips of her fingers, going through stone as her spine cracks and breaks, rearranging as a deep terrible roar rises from the very depth of her soul as the seal on her belly glows and burns.

The first tail whips out, scaled thickly in grey with an underside of dark red and blood splatters against the side of the cavern.

Red bubbles and froths, a sickening sort of chakra that crawls through her veins, poisoning once harmonious blue and evaporates her tears before they can fall as she screams and screams and _screams._

Two more tails uncurls with a snap, twining before one of them shoots clean through a Kiri shinobi that grasps at it with a bloody gurgle and Rin twists towards them, mouth snapping shut, nose flaring, her senses going high-wire, the world a strange grey shade with splashes of violent red.

_Kill,_ her mind roars and she howls with it, rock crumbling as her feet digs in and she twists on all four, tails whipping behind her as she lunges.

-

Rin lurches awake, twisting as she vomits out a mess of blood and brown, coughing as she pushes up, stumbling and collapsing onto her knees, arms wrapping around herself.

The Sanbi grumbles inside her mind, a strange rustling noise sliding against her senses and her nails digs deep into the skin of her arms, feeling the way the great demon settled down with a heavy exhale filled with deep satisfaction.

The three tails shifts behind her, one curling over her shoulder with a gentle brush against her cheek and Rin bites down on the inside of it until she tastes blood as she curls up naked, alone and afraid – far from the comfort of Konoha.

_Mine, _it thinks to her contently.

-

The first thing Rin understands of the demon sealed inside of her is that it’s possessive. It rustles and touches and prods and groans inside of her.

_Mine, mine, mine, mine._

The tails are hers but also not, her mind is hers but also not.

She’s no-longer _only_ Rin and she knows that she can’t return to Konoha like this.

_“Why would you return there?” _The Sanbi wonders when it comes across the thought where she sits, curled up, clad in clothes stripped from Kiri-shinobi who had followed her and consequently died for it.

They’re too large, drooping over her hands and pooling at her feet, but she finds that if she flattens the scales of her tails they hide decently with two wrapped around her chest and the third curling down her leg.

“My team is there,” she tells the demon, arms around her knees and chin resting on them. “Minato-sensei, Kakashi-kun, Obito-kun. And then Kushina-san."

It’s a small list but it’s _hers._ They’d almost lost Obito but he’d survived and she’d clawed him out from beneath the rocks with Kakashi at her side and they’d brought him home because they were a _team_ and a team didn’t leave each other behind.

_“It’s been almost three weeks,” _the Sanbi rumbles, large body rustling inside her mind, free to do as it wished with no bars to contain it. _“Are you so sure you’re the one leaving them and not the other way around?” _

-

The thing is that she’s not the son of the famous White Fang and she’s not the cousin of Uchiha Fugaku, future clan-head.

She’s just Nohara Rin.

Thirteen, the purple marks on her cheeks a promise of a mother who’d died before she learned how to walk. There’s no clan, no family – she never even learns her father’s name. Rin grows-up alone and for all that she reaches out she finds that very few reaches back and the apartment she moves into upon becoming a genin is small and empty.

Her team consists of two boys who grows closer to each other with one’s narrow survival and Rin finds herself once again left behind. Her sensei cares, she knows he does, but it’s not her apartment Kushina and Minato breaks into to cook food and sneak hugs because Rin appears well-adjusted in comparison to her teammates and she knows this.

She’s not the boy who finds his father dangling from the ceiling and she can’t resent Kakashi for getting something he so clearly and desperately needs but it doesn’t curb the loneliness either.

Inside her mind the Sanbi sleeps, tails shifting on her stomach to wrap around her more securely in a possessive hold that makes the hair on her back rise for all that is also soothes strangely.

Rin is not familiar with hugs but she tentatively wraps her arms around the tails as she closes her eyes and makes a decision.

-

Rin has always been good at meditation and she digs herself a hole that is just large enough for her to worm her body deep, deep beneath a thorny bush that snags at her skin but hides the entrance of it.

It’s vaguely claustrophobic with her arms tight at her sides but she can’t leave her body in the open and there is no-one to guard her.

So she hides and then she closes her eyes and forces herself not to think of the skitter of small feet at her spine, the wiggle of a centipede brushing up against her stomach, rocks hard and sharp and the earth packed thick around her.

She’s dug deep and the light can barely be seen at the head of the tunnel.

Rin closes her eyes and she meditates, focusing on her breathing, at the strange burning beneath her skin that doesn’t go away, and then she opens her eyes and she’s no-longer in the tunnel but on top of a large stretch of water.

She nearly sinks down before catching herself, head snapping up at the sound of an enormous body groaning into movement and eyes nearly as large as she is tall lowers down to peer at her with something that might have been surprise.

It’s all sharp and jagged, jaw broad and terrifying, the underside of its heavy armour the same blood red as the underside of her own tails which stretches and curls almost absently behind her where she stands in a physical manifestation of herself.

She thinks that is says something that they’re still there.

_We have the same eyes, _she finds herself thinking as it sinks deeper and deeper until it flattens into the shallow water.

_“Little Turtle,” _it rumbles, possessive, _pleased_ in a way that strokes against her, its voice rough and loud and its breath coming out in a heavy sigh. _“You are here.”_

“We-“ She swallows. “We need to work together,” she tells it with bravado she doesn’t necessarily feel.

_“Together?”_ It echoes, blinking large eyes. _“Mine,”_ it reminds her.

“We share the same body which means we need to work together to stay alive.” She takes a step forward and then another, yellow in a sea of purple dipping to follow through the jagged sharpness of a jutting jaw. “If I’m yours then – then that means you’re mine, too. And this body is _ours_ and you- _you_ have a responsibility to teach me so I can make sure it stays alive.”

_“Responsibility?” _the Sanbi rumbles. _"Mine."_

“We share the same body which means you’re _mine_ too,” she repeats, firmer. “And you’ll teach me so I can protect both of us,” she says bravely to a laugh that echoes loud enough that she knows her ears will be bleeding when she returns awake.

It’s a grating noise, as terrifying as the wild water swallowing a too small body into its frothing depth and when it stops it’s to a silence just as consuming.

_“Protect me?”_ the Sanbi snaps its large mouth_. “Brave, brave little turtle,”_ it rumbles.

“You don’t want to be locked up,” she says, licking her lips. “You roam free in my mind and my body.” It’s a gamble and Rin isn’t anyone’s but she’s not just Rin anymore and this great demon rests inside of her, fills her veins, rumbles inside her mind.

A breath of warm air nearly sends her back but an enormous tail rises behind her and scoops her up, her body freezing as it brings her closer, so close that if she wants to she can reach out and lay a hand on one of the giant spikes that juts from its jaw.

_“You shall call me, Isobu,” _it tells her and there’s amusement in the gravel of its voice. _“I am the Sanbi, my tails are three and it is my chakra that run through your veins. You are strong but I’ll make you stronger still and you will make sure no human tries to lock me away again.”_

“I promise, Isobu,” Rin says and the beast rumbles, bringing her closer, and her heart skips a beat as its tail curves as she’s dipped beneath the spikes that jut from above and below to its brow that it strokes up over her belly in a way that absurdly brings her mind to a cat, only larger and far more terrifying.

But it strangely eases something inside of her, her breath stuttering for a moment before smoothing out, and she hesitates but reaches out to touch gently against it and for a creature made entirely of chakra it is surprisingly warm beneath the touch of her palm.

-

Rin wakes with a spider web in her hair and a small mouse curled up against her spine and she nearly panics before she remembers herself and half-wiggles, half-claws her way out and into the fresh air, stumbling and sinking to her knees, quite unable to keep herself standing with the rush of adrenaline fading out of her system, hardly able to believe it.

She squints up, realising that it was nearly dark and she’s filthy but triumphant and for the first time since waking up surrounded by Kiri-nin there is a part of her that dares to hope.

-

It takes her an hour to track down a lake but they’re plenty around here for she is closer to Kiri than to Konoha, the forest large and lush and spiralling with green around her, wild flowers and insects thriving.

She combs the spider web out of her hair before stripping down and there’s a stirring of anticipation that doesn’t belong to her when she dips her toes down into the water before slipping down, submerging herself fully with a whoosh of breath as the cold water envelopes her.

The Sanbi, Isobu, is a being of chakra but its love for the water spirals through her, soft and aching with yearning and she feels its eyes looking through hers when her tails flick out of her control to bring her deeper with a rumble and her mouth stretches despite herself.

Holding her breath comes easier and easier with every swim like this and she twists, looking up through the water and the dark sky and the bright stars that isn't blurred through the water despite how deep she is.

There’s a slight pressure at her ear but chakra brushes up, eases it, urging her deeper and she allows it.

Rin misses Konoha and she misses Minato-sensei and Kushina-san and Kakashi-kun and Obito-kun but there’s something freeing about being here, just the two of them.

Rin and Isobu.

And perhaps it isn’t healthy to cling to an ancient demon as her anchoring point but she’s tasted fear and she doesn’t want to taste it again.

_“We’ll become stronger,”_ Isobu promises as it guides her deeper and deeper, fish trailing past her and its instincts nudging her own until she finds herself staring at a large fish nearly twice her size, resting among the rocks.

Rin is earth but Isobu is water – it lives and breathes it and her hands follows and forms and she inhales, allows the murky water to fill her lungs before she spits it out in a stream of hot jet water that kills before it has time to realise she’s there.

Golden against a sclera of purple, so different from what had once been, watches for a moment before she swims closer and a tail grows and stretches to wrap around her kill before she twists, lungs suddenly burning as she makes her way to the surface.

_Stronger_, the beast promises her.

And so she will be.

-

Rin turns fourteen and then fifteen and sixteen inside the forest and she’s nearly seventeen when she steps out of it and makes for the nearest village with a pouch of money on her hip from shinobi who’d encroached on her territory.

It’s nearing winter and she’s in two sweaters that had been scrubbed clean of blood, tails tucked away like Isobu had taught her and her eyes temporarily brown with Isobu settled away from her senses in grudging agreement.

She knows that if she’s to fit in her first goal is a clothes shop for all that the entire thing feels strange as the rumble and bustle of the streets reaches her ears.

Rin slips silently inside, smelling her way to the scent of dyes and stepping inside the small shop where an elderly woman raises her head and squints at her.

“Shinobi gear?” Rin asks, voice coming up rougher than she means, and the woman points her deeper behind thick curtains.

Dark pants, high-booted sandals, a thick sweater which reaches high on her neck and a tan coat with a high-collar, two thick red stripes stretching near the bottom of it. 

Feeling less like patch-work of things belonging to dead people Rin makes her way to the bar and slips inside.

If she’s going to make something of herself she needs money and if there’s something Isobu has taught her it’s how to _hunt._

The rows of bounties greet her on the wall, numbers tallied below names, bandits, many low-rank, not what she’s here for.

She buys a Bingo Book over the counter along with some sake and a fish stew which smells strongly of herbs, the sauce thick and the fish pink when it’s placed down before her.

It’s very different from her own making and she hums appreciatively, Isobu making a sceptical noise low in its throat but when she’s finished it urges her to order more and she does, along with some garlic bread which makes the great beast inside of her practically salivate.

_“More of this,”_ Isobu tells her when she’s full, bowl and plate clean.

Rin taps her finger against the picture of a high-level A-rank shinobi from the Sand.

“First we hunt,” she tells it and she feels its appreciation as thick and familiar as if it was her own.

-

Rin spends four years with only Isobu as her company and she finds that she has a hard-time feeling anything for the humans that surround her, wide-eyed and stepping out of her path when she lugs her prey to whatever village that happens to be near.

She keeps a Kiri hunter-nin mask she steals from one of her kills to use as she hunts to keep anyone from staring too long in the bars and restaurants she frequents as her reputation grows.

There are pictures in the Bingo Book which she recognises and stays carefully clear of.

“The Smiling Man” Uchiha Obito.

“Silver Fang” Hatake Kakashi.

Both ranked as A-list threats at seventeen, Konoha their affiliation, their sensei the Yondaime Hokage.

“The Red-Hot Habanero” Uzumaki Kushina: S-rank threat.

And then-

It’s strange to look at Minato-sensei after all this time – her fingers ghosting over his face, the SS-rank, Yondaime Hokage, before she turns the page, forcing herself not to linger for regret is foolish: she had made her choices.

Konoha is striving, Rin learns, and there’s a sharp thing inside of her when the first rumour of the Yondaime’s son tickles at her hearing. His and Kushina’s, Rin knows with a surety she’s not entirely confident she has a right to.

_Namikaze Naruto._

In the aftermath of a hunt, two Iwa jounin dead at her feet, she closes her eyes and thinks about what he might look like. Red hair? Blond hair? Green eyes or blue? Did he look more like Kushina or more like Minato?

It was probably too early to tell and Rin leans back against the trunk of a tree.

_“You dwell,”_ Isobu rumbles to her, a splash of water loud in her ears as it slips into the large lake she’d transformed her mind into slowly with its guiding hand, its eagerness nearly clogging her throat at the first realisation that she _could._

“I loved them once,” Rin tells it. “It doesn’t just go away.”

_“They never came,” _Isobu grumbles, possessive as always, and her mouth twitches.

“And I am not going back,” she reassures.

Her tails are out and Isobu wraps two of them tight enough around her mid-riff that is threatens to leave a bruise in its wake until she reaches down and gives a small push and it eases off with a little rumble, large eyes closing, its chakra burning through her to ease any strain from the hunt, a small nick on her cheek fading with a small itch. An apology.

“What do you say to some garlic bread and grilled fish?” she asks as she considers the two dead bodies with a little poke of her toe.

_“Ame?” _

“Ame,” Rin agrees.

It did have the best fish, after all.

-

Rin grows a name for herself and by twenty-one she’s marked as an S-rank threat in the Bingo Books, a rough sketch of her mask visible on the pages she flips through.

“Ryoshi” they calls her, for that is what she is – she hunts and she eats.

The mask could have belonged to anyone if not for the golden eyes peering out and she wonders who’d been good enough to sneak close enough to catch sight of them and go beneath her notice and thus survive.

_“Kill them,”_ Isobu rumbles and Rin automatically turns to look at the village that had issued the notice, lingering on the four waves that made up the Kiri-mark and touching two fingers to it with a stretching of her mouth that is more teeth than smile.

“We hunt,” she agrees, trees rustling around her and Isobu’s chakra,_ their _chakra, whispering a promise beneath her skin where it burns and froths.

-

Rin kills two of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist and mutilates a third, leaving him screaming in the mud beneath her with a cock of her head, his legs severed at the knee and kunai buried carefully into one eye at the time, picking the globes out and squishing them beneath her boots.

It’s raining when she straightens out and meets the pin-prick eyes of Hoshigaki Kisame watching her quietly from the trees.

“I am not of Kiri,” he tells her with a flash of sharp teeth when she considers him. “Got curious when I heard the rumours you were moving this way.”

Her eyes are drawn to the cloak drawn around him, red clouds against a field of black.

_Akatsuki, _her mind dredges up. _Ame affiliated._

She turns and hefts the large cleaver with a twirl of a hand before dismissing it and letting it sink into the mud, considering the spear-like thing before doing the same to it.

By the time she straightens up Kisame is looking vaguely pained, twin-blades of lightning affinity in her hands.

She slowly drops them into the mud alongside the others.

“Do you want them?” she finds herself asking, voice rough.

“You _don’t?_” he asks wryly.

She shrugs. “I have no need of them.”

His gaze lingers on her person, taking in the single kunai pouch wrapped around her leg, a thing used only to skin her kills for she had her tails and hands which were far more dangerous than any metal.

“I’ll trade you,” Kisame decides after a long moment of contemplation.

Isobu rises in interest inside her mind and Rin cocks her head, recalling Kisame’s Bingo Book information.

For some reason he laughs when she asks him to trade the swords for a shark but he obliges and Rin can practically _hear_ Isobu salivate when the enormous creature makes its appearance, killed with a sharp draw of Kisame’s kunai.

“Share?” she asks, hefting the creature up as Kisame picks and seals the swords before straightening up.

He makes a thoughtful noise, eyes fixated on her. “Shark tastes great with some red pepper,” he tells her and she blinks, contemplating that as she trots off towards her camp as he falls in easy step with her.

“Never had shark before.”

Isobu had and it is practically squirming inside of her at the promise of the meat.

Kisame had been generous in his summon and Rin sees no reason to share what she wouldn’t be able to finish on her own anyway. 

She shares her kills with Isobu all the time.

-

It’s a strangely relaxed thing between the two of them. Kisame shows her how to butcher it, what pieces to eat and what to do with it as he scoops the gut out with large clever hands and Rin listens quietly, Isobu impatient inside of her but straining its hearing just as anxiously.

The fire is already burning and the sound the shark meat makes when it hits the pan will fill her dreams for a long-time to come, the sizzling like a whisper of magic, herbs already joining it, butter and onion and red peppers at the bottom turning it all into something that makes her inhale with relish.

“You’re not quite what I imagined the infamous Ryoshi to be,” Kisame tells her where she’s pushed her mask up just enough to shove her chopsticks up with a piece of shark meat that practically melts in her mouth as she chews.

“What did you imagine me like?” Rin asks only half-way curious.

It’s rare that she interacts with others outside Isobu but she finds herself strangely at-ease with this man who is not quite human-looking, just like her, her tails out but carefully tucked beneath her sweater at her back, one wrapped tight around her thigh.

Blue, gills beneath his eyes, hair dark blue and styled up much like a fin.

Rin thinks of herself as human and turtle both, a corruption from Isobu that she can’t quite shake off, and while she doesn’t have gills she does, like a turtle, filter oxygen from the water around her through the skin at her neck and if she wants she can stay beneath water for months at the time in a state of hibernation.

There’s a sharpness in her throat from the teeth that had grown in the very back there and Rin knows that Isobu has become dangerously entangled with her in a way that makes her doubt there was a way to truly separate them without either dying.

“Hard to say,” Kisame admits, taking a rough bite with a pleased noise. “You’re pretty intense. If I was to wager a guess I would say you’ve spent some time away from human settlements.”

His mouth quirks when she doesn’t respond, his gaze knowing.

They finish dinner in peace.

Then, only then, does Rin lash out and Kisame meets her with a grin revealing rows of sharp teeth and she pushes her mask up, opening her mouth to reveal her own to a widening of his eyes as he grasps for the handle of his sword and she snaps her mouth shut, sliding her mask back and down.

Isobu peers through her eyes, golden in sclera of purple.

_“A worthy opponent,”_ it observes.

Hoshigaki Kisame, the tailless tailed-beast.

She’s heard her rumours and anticipation burns through her veins and she finds the same echoed in the pin-pricks of his.

_How will you fair against a real tailed beast?_

-

Rin blinks awake to devastation around her, mask still in place.

She drags her body up into a sitting position, her body burning where Isobu’s chakra had snapped ribs and bones back in place, knitting together the flesh on her back where Samehada had shaved the skin off with a whoosh of her breath when chakra was sucked out of her.

She cranes her head around, grabbing for the small note attached to her mask with an itch of foreign chakra.

_Until next time, Kame-chan._

_\- Kisame_

Her mouth twitches and she folds the note and tucks it away into her pocket, stretching her arms up above her before climbing to her feet, briefly wobbly from the blood loss before she catches herself.

She feels strangely satisfied from something that had ended in a draw, Isobu sleeping deep inside of her with large exhausted breaths.

It’s also good to be recognised for what she is and she decides that if she was to come across Kisame again she wouldn’t mind sharing a meal with him a second time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had this in the works for awhile now but I had some trouble finding how to get Rin from point A to point B in terms of how I wanted her to develop. She died young in canon and like many of Kishimoto's female characters she was given little development so I've spent a couple of weeks now thinking about it between stuff.
> 
> (Keeping vita-divata's lovely art as a background on my phone for most of it).
> 
> And then a couple of days ago it just _clicked_ and this wrote itself over a couple of hours and I'm half-way through the second chapter.
> 
> I also found a kick out of taking some inspiration from turtles and incorporating it with her character and I've got a pretty good grasp of what I want this to be now.
> 
> Seriously though, check out [vita-divata's art](https://vita-divata.tumblr.com/) because it's something else. 
> 
> I'm artsy-death on tumblr and this has been chapter one of Turtle in a Sea of Paper Flowers. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Translation:  
Ryoshi - Hunter  
Kame - Turtle


	2. Curiosity

Rin turns twenty-three on top of the Yondaime’s Head, overlooking her old village with a stick of dango caught between her teeth, mask beside her for it doesn’t feel right to be back here and covered.

Konoha had once been her home, her everything, and it’s been ten years since she last visited it.

It’s strange to consider and she brushes some of her hair back when it catches in the wind, contemplative as she looks at the stretch of lanterns lightening what would have been dark streets into something filled with movement, small figures going about their day, a flare of chakra catching every now and then where shinobi flashes over the rooftops.

She has her own chakra coiled so tight and so deep that Isobu’s grumbles can barely be heard but if it wishes it could push back at it.

It says something about their time together that it doesn’t, allowing her this moment for herself as she drags the stick out of her mouth and grabs for a second one, tongue swiping over the sweet sauce before it could meet her hand and drawing the top one into her mouth with a soft hum.

Dango were for birthdays only, a sweet treat offered to her when she’d wrinkled her nose at the taiyaki that were often favoured among the other children at the orphanage. Even now, with money bulging in her pouch, it was a treat reserved for her birthday only.

_Ten years._

Practically an anniversary.

She wonders what might had been without Isobu, can’t quite imagine a life without the great beast stretching through her chakra system and her mind, a constant burn and companion.

Her team feels like a distant dream of a promise of better days that had never come true.

She’d spent the day snooping through the streets, listening to the gossip, dedicated nearly an hour to trailing after Obito and a six-year-old boy with sunshine blond hair and whiskers on his cheeks.

Had followed at the heel of Kakashi, taller and far more relaxed than she ever remembered him being, his hair just as wild and silver but his grey eyes far gentler than they had been.

She’d even caught sight of Kushina, briefly, in the company of Uchiha Mikoto with preteen boy and his younger brother at her side, their hair just as dark as Obito’s, eyes just as black.

Rin swallows the last dango, dragging the stick roughly against her teeth as she pulls it out and slides her mask in place.

“Stalking is rude,” she informs the dark shadow behind her, Isobu abruptly rising from deep, deep inside of her as her eyes shift from brown to golden, white to purple.

Her tan cloak flutters in the wind as she turns and looks at the Yondaime Hokage.

“So is sneaking past my gate guards,” he tells her and she meets his gaze, eyes as blue as his son’s, his hair longer and pulled back in a loose pony-tail at his neck, and though he’s older than her memories he burns just as brilliant here, before her, ten years after her disappearance from the village.

She’d passed by her Memorial Stone and seen her name carved among those who had died in service of the village which had brought a strange sort of dissonance.

Had they looked for her? Or had they seen the destruction brought and written her off? She’s not sure what to feel one way or another but Isobu rumbles in warning so she refocuses her attention of her old sensei.

She stretches her senses, getting a feeling for how many ANBU are surrounding her, counting twelve.

_“They’re not underestimating us,” _Isobu rumbles with satisfaction.

“You should get some better guards then,” Rin suggests with a little tilt of her head. “Who knows who could come strolling in?”

“It’s not every day the infamous Ryoshi decides to grace Konoha. From our reports you tend to avoid us and you seldom pick-off even nukenin with former Konoha affiliation.” Rin looks to the ANBU in Bear mask beside his Kage, finding eerie intelligent eyes.

Morino Ibiki, she knows, had shaken enough shinobi before their deaths to have a decent idea of the ins and outs of villages. Had picked up one spy here and there and people were surprisingly chatty at the promise of a slow death.

They always died anyway, no matter how sweet her promises of survival for a wagging tongue was and she’d recently been flagged as an SS-rank threat.

No wonder the Yondaime himself had made an appearance.

“I am not a danger to you and yours unless you make me one today,” Rin says, stretching her arms out behind her, palms flat against the stone, tails shifting against her skin, ready to be used.

Bear clearly doesn’t believe her but the Yondaime is watching her carefully, taking in the paper box finished beside her.

“Can I offer you some more dango then?” he asks her, a contemplative little glimmer in his eyes.

“You may,” she agrees with a little twitch of her lips behind the mask when Bear gives her and then his Kage and outraged look when his leader flags one in a crow mask with a twist of his fingers.

He is not her Minato-sensei anymore, nearly ten years has passed and that is ten years too late for what had been, but she is Ryoshi and she is dangerous and Minato loves Konoha. He’d never been one for unnecessary sacrifice and she’s been careful not to make herself an enemy of Konoha.

“You mind if I keep you company?” he asks her when two plates of dango and two ciders have arrived and she gestures beside her, pushing her mask up just enough to get the mouth of the bottle to her lips. If there’s any sedative of poison in it Isobu’s chakra would burn right through it.

She’s twenty-three, a careful brush of chakra hides the purple marks on her cheeks and no-one here would think twice about a nukenin hiding behind an illusion. Minato studies her briefly but likely suspects there is little info to draw from what he can see.

She’s no longer the little girl he had known. Her jaw and cheeks are sharper, lacking the youth that had been.

“I’m going to take a gamble and say you’re not formerly affiliated to Kiri.”

Her mouth twitches.

“Correct,” she admits and his eyes flicks to her mask before he hums, taking a long sip of his own cider.

It’s a simple mask with a half diamond of purple stretching up with its point where the nose would have been, wavy lines for eyes and the tell-tale four smooth lines associated with Kiri. Tellingly, she hadn’t stroked a line through them, which could be read one way or the other.

She enjoyed the irony of it as she broke their bones in the hunt, tasting their fear, their horror, their begging as she slowly and methodically brought their end.

Just like they had, in their way, brought hers.

In another life, another time, she might have sat here beside her sensei and reminisced about old team meeting and missions but instead they are strangers, he a leader of the village she had never returned to and she a bounty hunter marked as a threat.

She’s not here to endear herself to Konoha, she’s here to say goodbye.

Rin breathes in the air, the scents of the village she’d loved, the ozone sting of the man beside her. There’s a little rumble from Isobu when it picks up on the scent of fox.

_“Kurama…”_ it rumbles and she blinks at the strange longing in its voice.

“So, what do you think of Konoha?” the Yondaime asks her and Rin closes her eyes before opening them up again.

Above her the stars are bright against the dark sky.

“It’s a beautiful village,” she tells him, warmly.

Minato pops a dango into his mouth, a fond soft smile on his lips. “It is, isn’t it?”

-

Rin loses her trackers some five miles from Konoha, hoisting herself up among the branches of a tall tree and finding herself a good spot to rest with the rustle of leaves around her.

“Happy Birthday, Rin,” she toasts herself with the last of the cider and a single dango which blossoms sweet on her tongue.

Inside her mind Isobu rumbles contently.

-

Rin balances carefully on the roof top, head cocking as she surveyed the man that had taken her prey.

Tall, masked, the same black cloak with red clouds that Kisame had worn brushing at his ankles.

_Kakuzu,_ she identifies, SS-rank nukenin from Takigakure.

_Akatsuki._

To have both Hoshigaki Kisame and Kakuzu affiliated with the Ame group was a curious thing and she wonders who’d managed such a thing. Kakuzu was, as far as she was aware, not interested in working with others – he was a known miser, stingy with money and with little regard for life.

And he’d taken her kill. Which she wasn’t terribly pleased about.

One of her tails shifts, the sharp ends scraping gently against her skin.

_“Then make a prey out of him,” _Isobu advices, not sounding terribly interested either way.

She isn’t exactly low on money, rather the opposite considering that the only thing she bought actively were food and drinks, preferring to sleep outside instead of being crammed into a small hotel room with only the roof above her.

She isn’t interested in making an enemy out of Akatsuki unless she had too. There were too much unknown there.

None of her business, really.

Humming to herself she steps back and disappear just as Kakuzu’s head jerks up to where she’d been.

-

Rin turns twenty-four and then twenty-five, time passing with good food and faster more violent hunts as she puts her sights higher and higher.

She had met Orochimaru once or twice when she was still a genin in Konoha. Clever, yes, she remembered that – but she also remembered the way his eyes had lingered just a minute too long on Obito and she bares her teeth in a snarl as she twists, tails growing and exploding out in a shield that she slides beneath as Kuzanagi collides against it and her chakra coated fingers sink deep into paper white skin, tearing and twisting to a howl as she tore his arm clean off, discarding it aside.

Isobu’s chakra froths, bubbling around her in redred_red, _blood dripping from her fingers as he stumbles back, clutching at the gaping stump and the bone visible there.

Snake venom itches and burns beneath her skin where his large summon had sunk its teeth into her before she killed it but it is already sealing together and her tails coils dangerously behind her.

Rin’s eyes shifts momentarily to the small dark haired boy bound with wide eyes, remembering the way Kushina had grinned at Uchiha Mikoto accompanied by her two sons, the elder’s so soft when he looked down at this small boy.

_“Dead prey,”_ Isobu hisses as she turns her attention back on Orochimaru.

“Dead prey,” Rin agrees as she sinks down on all four, stone carving like butter beneath the chakra that wraps and merges against her skin.

-

Rin floats in the dark water, allowing it to wrap around her, healing the last of her wounds and soothing the raw sting of new skin.

It feels as natural as breathing these days and her mouth twitches as Isobu stretches out, sharing her senses to the best of its abilities, much like a cat basking in the sun.

She blinks, eyes adjusted for the water picking up the movement above her and she nearly inhales a mouthful of water when a pale leg dips down, followed by another, and then an entire body in splash of red as the water washes the blood from their skin.

Frozen in place Rin stares blankly at the pale swell of breasts, nipples hard in the cold water, fascination slowly overtaking her the longer she looks.

Her eyes dart back a moment later, just enough to categorize the hard muscles beneath skin marked in pale scars as _kunoichi_ and then up at the moon’s bright light, still as to not draw attention to herself, allowing herself to slowly sink deeper and deeper, mouth carefully shut least a single bubble would escape her.

Soap froths against the surface, hands scrubbing down long limbs and Rin catches a hint of purple hair far above when a head ducks down to wet the locks into a dark, nearly black colour.

Rin breathes out internally almost twenty minutes later when the kunoichi hoists herself up, leaving only her feet in the water, and Rin blinks at the purple painted toes, fascinated for reasons she can’t quite place as her tails gentle shifts beneath her to send her just a bit closer to the surface, admiring the elegant arch of the hard soles.

She stretches her senses and nearly three hours have passed before she breaches the surface, just enough to allow her eyes to glide over the surroundings, stilling at the sight of the kunoichi deep asleep near a tree, bandages wrapped around her upper arm.

She’s resting with her face turned towards the lake, one arm folded to pillow her head, hair dried and falling down near a pale throat.

Rin dips closer, silent as she folds her arms on the bank, resting her chin on top of them.

She’s never had her alone time interrupted like this before and there’d been a strange stirring in her gut at the sight of the sinuous body of the other, eyes drawn to the glint of silver just beneath a pink lip, her teeth snagging and pressing down on her own in response.

So distracted it takes her several moments to take note of the black cloak with its red clouds.

_Akatsuki._

Rin doesn’t recognise this stranger from the Bingo Books and perhaps that’s why she finds herself pushing up, bare feet touching against the grassy ground as she takes one step forward and then another, tails coiling behind her, ignoring Isobu’s grumbling as the water slides down her naked body.

She crouches down, fingers ghosting over the fabric of the cloak, finding, unsurprisingly, that it was made of sturdy material meant to soften blows and prevent blades from sinking deep.

Rin grabs it and she can’t say what drives her to do it but she sweeps it around her, noting that the sleeves fall past her knuckles with a wiggle of her fingers and tilting her nose to inhale the scent of something soft and papery in the high-raised collar.

Stills and swivels around at the sound of metal and takes a step back, finding amber eyes awake and looking her.

“So you were the one watching me bathe,” the woman says, her voice smooth and feminine, a curious glint in her eyes as Rin stares at her.

“I was there first,” Rin says defensively, hand clenching around the opening of the cloak.

“Is that so?” There’s a note of amusement in the purple haired woman’s voice now. “My apologies.”

Rin’s tongue twists strangely in her mouth, wavering, not sure what to do.

The other kunoichi pushes up, feet tucking in at her side. “I am Konan.”

“Rin,” she blurts out and the woman’s, _Konan’s_, smile grows, the corner curling up in a way that draws Rin’s eyes before she snaps them up to catch a glimmer in amber.

Rin doesn’t care much for the humans around her but there’s something undeniable _interesting_ about Konan, her scent papery with a hint of flowers against a background of musk that fills her lungs, aware of the way it coming to stick against her skin with the cloak still wrapped around her.

She takes a step forward, tilting her head, nostrils flaring, wondering if it was a natural thing to a sharpening look and a twitch of fingers but Rin is distracted, fingers reaching out to touch against the metal that catches and glints in the light of the moon.

It’s smooth, set just beneath pale soft lips, her fingers trailing up and aside, a little furrow in her brow as she studies the kohl beneath curious amber eyes, leaning closer, so close that the tip of her nose brushes against the sharp line of a cheekbone as she inhales.

She hums, her breath coming out in a warm sigh. “You smell good,” Rin tells the other, eyelids lidding. “Like flowers and paper and _ink_.”

Fingers pushes against her chest and Rin momentarily bares her teeth but grudgingly allows herself to be pushed back, cloak open where it hangs on her shoulders, her body pale and nude beneath it, water trailing down her chest.

“What are you doing out here on your own, Rin?” Konan murmurs, eyes darker than they had been, something in her eyes Rin can’t quite place.

“Resting,” Rin admits, aware of the tips of the woman’s fingers still pressing against her collarbone. “After a hunt.”

“A hunt,” Konan repeats and Rin hums, her hand wrapping around the wrist of the woman, loose, non-threatening, giving it a little tug until a palm splays flat against her skin, so warm that Rin can’t help a little shiver, aware of the way her heart pounds calm and steady beneath the other’s touch.

“And you?” she asks, nails trailing over the soft downy hairs on the woman’s arm with a fascination she doesn’t quite understand.

“Same as you,” Konan says and Rin’s eyes darts to the bandage, the hint of rust and copper that still lingers there as her nose flares.

There’s a contemplative look in Konan’s eyes, curious as she studies the younger woman and she turns her hand experimentally, allowing her nails to trail gently up and over a pale throat to a dilating of pupils before she pulls it away and tucks it back at her side with a twitch of her lips as eyes trails down and lingers before darting up to meet her own again.

“I’d like my cloak back, if you don’t mind,” Konan murmurs.

Rin narrows her eyes, grasping at it and taking a step back.

“Mine now,” she informs Konan. “I found it.”

Konan pauses, a little dip in her brow.

“You can’t just-“

“See you around, _Konan_.”

Rin turns quite abruptly, naked feet stepping without a ripple onto the dark lake with the ghost of the moon’s light upon her.

The younger glances back for just a moment, golden glimmering and teeth baring in what might have been a smile before she simply disappeared and Konan’s eyes widen, flaring her chakra as she spins around, but other than her missing cloak there’s not a single evidence of the strange girl’s visit.

-

Rin spreads the cloak on the ground before stretching out upon it, quite pleased with her catch.

There’s a distinct undertone of amusement from Isobu that she can’t quite place but the being remains quiet, half-submerged, content to leave her to her own device as she rubs her cheek against the collar where the scent is the strongest before relaxing against it with a low noise in her chest, one arm looping around it to make sure her nose was pressed against it.

“I think,” she tells Isobu, “I want to find out more about these _Akatsuki._”

_“I thought you decided you were going to stay away from them,”_ Isobu rumbles, its amusement so thick now that she could practically taste it and Rin furrows her brows.

“I changed my mind.”

_“Did you now?”_

“If they’re going to steal my kills then I better find out about them. Keep an eye on them.”

_“Of course,”_ Isobu agrees and she has the distinct feeling the demon is laughing at her. _“It’s only natural.”_

She pauses a bit at the easy agreement.

“Alright,” she says slowly.

_“Alright.”_

Rin furrows her brows but ultimately decides that it wasn’t worth pursuing and curls up in the cloak, the space where Konan’s palm had pressed down strangely warm as she closes her eyes and falls into a deep sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In where Rin finds herself terribly fascinated, Konan finds herself sans a cloak and Isobu is terribly amused.
> 
> Going to wrap this baby up in the next chapter so prepare for some Akatsuki content as Rin finds herself in a bit of a complicated situation.
> 
> I'm so happy you guys are enjoying it, I'm having way too much fun with this Rin. Thank you for your comments, I'll head back to respond as soon as this is up!
> 
> I'm artsy-death on tumblr and this has been chapter 2 of Turtle in a Sea of Paper Flowers.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


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